Tag: Eu

Russian op-ed writers are intrigued with Donald Trump, who has spoken of improving relations between the U.S. and the Russian Federation. But they want to know what the bottom line will be, given his equally strong “tough guy” bluster.

“What’s particularly shocking is the deafening silence of the international community, which has time and again ceded to pressure from Saudi Arabia,” said Philippe Bolopion, deputy director for global advocacy at Human Rights Watch.

“While the Brits were waking up in the ruins of their nation and saying, ‘Oh God! What have we done?’ ” the “Full Frontal” host quips, “a lot of Americans were looking over and saying, ‘Oh God! What are we about to do?’ ”

Trump’s blatantly racist attacks have always carried the implication that something is wrong with those brown-skinned people and they should be stopped from immigrating. Yet in an ironic twist, the first known assassination plot against him came from a white Briton.

According to the environmental organization, leaked documents from negotiations for the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, or TTIP—an international trade deal—reveal a legal program that would exchange national sovereignty for rule by corporations.

Sudden, horrific events in the middle of a presidential campaign provide an X-ray of the instincts and thinking of the candidates. We can see what their priorities are, and pick up clues about their character.

The various nostrums proposed by Donald Trump and Ted Cruz to counter Islamic State terrorism in Europe and North America (armed police patrols of putative “Muslim neighborhoods,” a Muslim exclusion act, etc.) are of course complete nonstarters.

After terrorists take dozens of lives in the Belgian capital, Donald Trump talks torture, Ted Cruz calls for a crackdown on Muslim neighborhoods and social media is flooded with condemnation of Islam. The group that has claimed responsibility for the massacre, Islamic State, warns of worse to come.

As several countries in the region—Hungary, Macedonia, Italy and Greece among them—struggle to deal with staggering numbers of refugees from conflict zones in the Middle East and Africa, European Union leaders have decided it’s time for an emergency summit on the subject.

Greece’s former finance minister had a contingency plan if the country’s creditors shut down its banking system and blocked its ability to do business with other countries, as they eventually did. And he’s being pilloried for it.

As Greek lawmakers prepare to vote on EU austerity demands attached to a new bailout, civil servants announced a 24-hour strike, and hundreds of protesters gathered in Athens to show their opposition to the terms.

In a move that looks at once like a boost for Greece’s economic cause and grounds for further complication among eurozone member countries, the International Monetary Fund on Tuesday warned that it might pull its support for the proposed bailout plan unless other nations agree to whittle down some of Greece’s debt.

Greece’s Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras on Tuesday continued the diplomatic high-wire act that his country’s economic crisis has obliged him to attempt by working hard to persuade members of the Greek Parliament and the general population to accept the bailout package he was just offered in Brussels.

What is happening in Greece in the name of austerity has already happened to the poor and the working class in the United States. If the global financial elites continue in power, the misery of the Greeks will become our own.

The German chancellor is being advised by the likes of Thomas Piketty and Jeffrey Sachs, among others, on how her decisions regarding Greece will shape how generations come to view her; a writer argues that there is “quiet racism” in Instagram filters; meanwhile, AirBnB may be destroying the creative class. These discoveries and more after the jump.

Aside from monetary considerations, time is clearly the most important commodity in the ongoing crunch sessions between Greek and European leaders as they hash out a potential rescue strategy to keep Greece in the eurozone and out of financial free fall.

If there was any lingering question about where the majority of Greeks stood on the deal drummed up by European creditors to try to contain Greece’s ongoing financial crisis, Sunday’s referendum on the bailout package soundly dispelled it.